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Thursday, October 25, 2012

Compared to the first two presidential
debates the third debate, the one on foreign policy, at Lynn University in Boca
Raton, Florida on Monday, October 22 was something of a snooze. There were no fireworks between
President Obama and Governor Romney both of whom focused on not doing any
harm to themselves.The video of the debate is posted below and here and here. You can find the transcript here and here.

Overall Romney came off quite well. He gave
the impression of being a sober and thoughtful statesman, while President Obama
came across as peevish and petulant. Charles Krauthammer comments that “Romney
went large, Obama went very, very small, shockingly small.” Romney’s strategy
in the debate was to avoid going down in the mud with Obama and appear
presidential. He succeeded in that. Indeed, Romney looked more presidential
than the president. I would have liked Romney to be more aggressive, especially
on the Obama Administration’s cover up of the terroristattack by Ansar al-Sharia on the American consulate in Benghazi,
Libya. Bill O’Reilly suggests that Romney did not want to appear
confrontational because it would be a turn off to women voters. Perhaps that is
so. Anyway, if Romney does not win the election on November 6, it will not be
because of his performance in the debates.

The main point I came away with from
the debate was that Romney and Obama differ more in style and optics than in
substance when it comes to foreign policy. Romney would present a tougher, more
Jacksonian face of America to the world, while keeping in place many of Obama’s
policies—policies that Obama himself inherited from George W. Bush. This is
only natural. America’s geopolitical interests have a continuity over the long
term that transcends the four or eight years of any administration. Democratic and Republican presidents from Truman through Reagan pursued the Cold War strategy of containment for forty years until the Soviet Union collapsed. Robert
Merry, editor of The National Interest,
a leading journal of the realist school of foreign policy, observed that “the
Republican candidate who presented himself to the American people on
foreign-policy issues came across as measured, moderate, informed and capable
of handling complex issues with nuance and balance.” On Syria, for example,
Romney would not intervene directly in that nation’s bloody civil war—there will
be no American boots on the ground. But he would like to provide arms and
assistance to some of the rebel groups to encourage a pro-American post-Assad
regime and short-circuit the growing influence of the Islamists. Romney will
continue to use sanctions against Iran, though he said he would make them tougher and
more effective than Obama has, and would order a military strike against Iran’s
nuclear facilities only as a last resort. Romney also plans to carry through
on Obama’s commitment to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan by the end
of 2014. And of course he praised the president’s decision to send SEAL Team
Six after Osama bin Laden. Romney understands that Jacksonian America will not
support any further nation building in the Muslim world. The American people
have spent enough blood and treasure in what has become a Sisyphean
task.

Where Romney did distinguish himself from
Obama was in his commitment to a Reaganesque policy of peace through strength. On
how to engage with the Muslim world going forward, Romney said this:

Well,
my strategy is pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to
make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to kill them, to take them out
of the picture. But my strategy is broader than that. That’s important, of
course. But the key that we’re going to have to pursue is a pathway to get the
Muslim world to be able to reject extremism on its own. We don't want another
Iraq. We don’t want another Afghanistan. That’s not the right course for us.

The
right course for us is to make sure that we go after the people who are leaders
of these various anti-American groups and these jihadists, but also help the
Muslim world. And how do we do that? A group of Arab scholars came together,
organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the world reject these
terrorists. And the answer they came up with was this: One, more economic
development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment—and
that of our friends—we should coordinate it to make sure that we push back and
give them more economic development. Number two, better education. Number
three, gender equality. Number four, the rule of law. We have to help these
nations create civil societies.

So Romney would embrace the Arab Spring
governments, including democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood governments,
and promote American influence through foreign aid and investment. But Romney
would make such aid conditional and use it to nudge leaders such as Egypt’s
President Mohamed Morsi away from Islamic supremacism and onto a path that could
in time create a civil society that reconciles Islam with liberal democracy.
Whether this can be done is the big unanswered question of the Arab Spring.
Islamic supremacism and the advance of the Jihad may yet prevail as Andrew McCarthy and Michael J. Totten argue. But the
previous “realist” policy of unconditional support for the mukhabarat (secret police) states
of Hosni Mubarak and his ilk in the Arab world has reached a dead end. Indeed it
was these sterile Soviet-style autocracies which suffocated the aspirations of
their young people for liberty, dignity, and upward mobility that produced Al Qaeda in
the first place. As former C.I.A. analyst Bruce Reidel writes, reformers in the
new Arab Spring governments “are trying to build more accountable and
democratic regimes that don’t repress their own people. These new governments
are trying to do something the Arab world has never done before—create
structures where the rule of law applies and the secret police are held
accountable to elected officials.” Reidel also admits “that is a tall order,
especially when terrorists are trying to create chaos.” Mitt Romney understands
this and appreciates that working with the new populist Arab regimes will be
more complicated than working with the old dictators. But the long-term positive
transformation of repressive societies is never simple or easy.

Engagement with the Arab Spring,
however, does not mean apologizing for America. Romney was at his strongest
when he blasted President Obama for his apology tours in the Middle East,
Europe, and Latin America. These apology tours projected weakness instead of strength
and it only encouraged the bad actors of the world to treat America with
contempt. “I think from the very beginning,” Romney said, “one of the
challenges we’ve had with Iran is that they have looked at this administration
and felt that the administration was not as strong as it needed to be. I think
they saw weakness where they had expected to find American strength.” Nothing
is more galling to Jacksonians than the projection of weakness. And in the high
stakes world of international politics projection of strength isn’t everything,
it’s the only thing (h/t Vince Lombardi). Romney went on:

And
then the President began what I’ve called an apology tour of going to various
nations in the Middle East and criticizing America. I think they looked at that
and saw weakness. Then when there were dissidents in the streets of Tehran, a
Green Revolution, holding signs saying, is America with us, the President was
silent. I think they noticed that as well. And I think that when the President
said he was going to create daylight between ourselves and Israel, that they
noticed that as well.

President Obama was visibly annoyed by
Romney’s characterization of his foreign trips. But the governor stood his ground.

Mr. President,
the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and
you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And, by the way,
you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other
nations. And, by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in
those nations, and on Arabic TV, you said that America had been dismissive and
derisive. You said that on occasion America has dictated to other nations. Mr.
President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other
nations from dictators.

This was Romney’s best line of the entire
debate. It showed his determination to clothe American foreign policy in the
unswerving Jacksonian commitment to liberty through strength. The President of
the United States never apologizes for America. He trumpets American
exceptionalism to the world. He keeps the Ahmadinejads of the world off balance
with the hint that he will use American might to pound them into the dust if
they don’t take America’s demands in diplomatic negotiations seriously. Again the purpose of a strong
military is to keep the peace by not having to use it too often. As Theodore
Roosevelt understood, the Big Stick of the military is best kept in reserve to back
up the softer more conciliatory voice of diplomacy. Mitt Romney also
understands this. While he may continue much of the Obama foreign policy in
practice, by presenting it to the world in Jacksonian colors he will project
the strength needed to preserve peace and advance American interests in the
world.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Overhead shot of Mitt Romney speaking to an energized crowd in Lebanon, Ohio, Saturday October 13.

In my previous post I said that Mitt
Romney needed to channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan if he wants to win this
election. Well, Mitt did it! Move over Alicia Keys; you’re not the only one
who’s on fire. Mitt Romney’s on fire now and it just might blaze a path for him
to the White House.

The fired up Mitt Romney, burning with
passion, was on display at a campaign stop in Lebanon, Ohio on Saturday
October 13. Speaking before an estimated crowd of 10,700 outside the historic
Golden Lamb Inn, Romney touched on many of the themes that resonate with
Jacksonians. This is what Romney must keep on doing for the remainder of the
campaign. This is a fine demonstration of how to rally Jacksonian America on
the stump and keep it energized and focused on victory.

The video of the speech is posted below.
You can also find it here, here, and here.

In the first half of the speech Romney listed
the five points of his plan for getting the economy moving again. “Number one
is energy. Number two is trade. Number three; I want to make sure people have
the skills they need to be able to work in the jobs of today. . . . Number 4 for me
is we’re going to cut federal spending. We are going to cap Federal spending
and get us on track to a balanced budget,” Romney added as his final point that
he would cut taxes on small businesses to encourage them to hire people. The
crowd cheered as Romney denounced the crony capitalism of the Obama administration;
how the $90 billion wasted on Solyndra and other “green” energy companies could
have hired two million teachers. “He likes picking winners and losers, or as a
friend said to me ‘no he just likes picking losers.’” Romney also reminded the audience that the
number of people on food stamps increased from 32 million to 47 million over
the last four years. “That’s an increase of 15 million people, more than the
population of Ohio.” The president, Romney quipped, would much rather focus on
the fate of Big Bird than find ways to combat the poverty which now traps one
in six Americans, and create jobs for young graduates, half of whom cannot find
college-level work. “What I want to talk about is how I can help save the
American family and get good jobs for the American people.” Romney repeated his
pledges to repeal Obamacare, not raise taxes on middle-class Americans and
small businesses, hold China to account for unfair trade practices, and restore the strength of the American military. And he also took a swipe at the teachers’ unions which is always
popular with Jacksonian audiences. (Romney was careful to distinguish between teachers and the teachers’ unions.)

“His campaign is getting smaller and
smaller,” Romney declared to the cheers of the more than 10,000 Ohioans
gathered in Lebanon. “And our crowds keep getting bigger and bigger. There’s a
crescendo of passion about changing Washington.” This is the look of political
momentum, “the Big Mo” as George H. W. Bush famously said.

When one thinks of Mitt Romney, passion
is not the first word that comes to mind. The Republican presidential candidate
does not come across as a particularly passionate guy. He is in many ways a
throwback to the 1950s era of Father Knows Best: a calm, old fashioned,
reserved, straight-arrow patriarch, who keeps his feelings buttoned up inside
his impeccably tailored business suit. Think of Mad Men’s Don Draper without
the psychological baggage and compulsive womanizing. This emotional reserve,
suitable perhaps for the CEO of Bain Capital, has not helped Governor Romney in
his campaign, making it difficult for him, unlike President Obama, to form an
emotional connection with the American electorate. Mitt Romney may be a
competent business executive and technocrat, but he is uncool and dull, the very
opposite of the ultra-hip and cool Barack Obama. Let’s face it: before his outstandingperformance in the first presidential debate on October 3, Mitt Romney was a failure as a candidate; one who put audiences to sleep and was unable to articulate a coherent and compelling message. Mitt Romney is
not Ronald Reagan.

Governor Romney is going to have to
channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan, and the spirit of Andrew Jackson too, and
soon, if he wants to win this election. As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walkerput it, “I think you’ve gotta get off the heels and move forward. I think Americans
want a fighter . . . I want to see fire in the belly.” Mitt really needs to show some passion. Can he do it? On his
foreign policy trip to Britain, Israel, and Poland, in his campaign stops with
Paul Ryan, in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and in the first presidential debate,
Romney gave hints that underneath his phlegmatic, buttoned-up exterior burned a
passionate, poetic, dare I say Jacksonian, fire in the belly and love of
country.

This passion also came through at a
speech he delivered at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, Florida, on May 17; a speech
which was secretly filmed and later released to the venerable progressive
magazine Mother Jones, by of all people James Earl Carter IV, grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. And so Mitt
Romney and his campaign now face a moment of truth. It is a moment of truth in
two ways: first, Romney told the truth about the economic and moral
challenge facing the nation when 47 percent of its people are at risk of sinking into dependency; and second, is the Romney
campaign now readyto act on that truth, to
aggressively push his pro-growth oppoturnity agenda forward and do what it takes to win this election?

Mitt Romney has to stop playing small ball and go big—to use a metaphor from his beloved Boston Red Sox, he should aim to hit that ball over the Green Monster and out of Fenway Park. Mitt can do this by becoming the champion of conservativism, its happy warrior as Monica Crowley would say, asserting conservative ideas of liberty and American exceptionalism with passion and gusto. He must unrelentingly attack
Barack Obama’s record in both domestic and foreign policy. He needs to show how
the faltering economy and the revival of the Islamic jihadist war against the
United States are the direct results of the ideological and policy failures of
the Obama administration. He should paint a picture of what four more years of
an Obama presidency would mean for the nation: a stagnating economy that
produces fewer jobs and diminished wealth creation; an expanding and increasingly
intrusive government bureaucracy; federal, state, and local governments headed
toward fiscal collapse; an America that can no longer promote liberty and prosperity at home or command respect in the
world. He has to make crystal clear why the twentieth-century social welfare administrative
state—the blue model—cannot be sustained in the twenty-first century. And Mitt
Romney needs to articulate his own pro-growth message of hope and opportunity. He must put forward a Romney alternative: specific policy proposals that
are grounded in free-market capitalism and traditional American values, and
make the case for how they will turn the country around and renew American
exceptionalism for the twenty-first century. He started to do this in the first presidential debate. Keep it up Mitt, keep it up.

What Mitt Romney must also do is rally the Jacksonian conservative base to his cause. The
former Massachusetts governor cannot defeat Barack Obama and win the White
House without an energized Jacksonian America fully committed to his victory. As Judge Andrew Napolitano put it, Romney “needs to recognize that his audience for victory is not his former neighbors in Boston, but Joe Sixpack in the heartland.” This means he must engage the social and cultural issues that are so important to Jacksonian conservatives, as well as taking strong stands on foreign policy and the economy. We know for sure that Governor Romney is passionate about free enterprise.
The Boca Raton speech shows that Romney is well versed in Jacksonian
ideas of “producerism,” what conservatives today like to call “the makers vs. the takers.” This is important, for Jacksonians have historically defined themselves first and foremost as hard-working productive Americans, the people who
make the country work.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Rick Santorum speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Michigan Forum, February 25, 2012

I’m a college professor and proud to be one. I teach American history at a technical college which is part of a state university system. I believe in the value of higher education and that it should be an option for those young, and not so young, men and women who have the desire and ability to pursue it. So now I’m going to do something that might seem bold and daring: I’m going to stand up for Rick Santorum who has taken a pounding in the liberal and establishment Republican media for his controversial views of higher education. Here’s why.

First let me say that I do have some meaningful political differences with Senator Santorum, especially on social issues. He is more socially conservative than I am. I believe that women should have access to contraception, though I agree with Santorum that it should not be a government entitlement. I believe that homosexuals should have the same rights as other Americans, but that gay and lesbian relationships should receive social and legal sanction through civil unions; I’m enough of a traditionalist to believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. I believe in the traditional American, conservative, and Jacksonian values of hard work, self-reliance, faith, community, patriotism, personal responsibility, and American exceptionalism. UnlikeSenator Santorum I believe that these values are not incompatible with sexual freedom. He does not appreciate the extent to which America’s core middle-class Jacksonian culture has been broadened, enriched and transformed in very positive and liberating ways by the Aquarian sexual revolution. That said, I’m drawn to Rick Santorum because he, more than any of the remaining candidates in this year’s presidential contest, is the strongest and most articulate champion of Jacksonian America and its idea of liberty.

The politics of conservative Jacksonian America are the politics of honor, liberty, and respect. The honor and respect due to those Americans who get up every day and do the tough and demanding jobs that make America work. The liberty of those Americans to live their lives as they choose, to be the masters of their destiny. Jacksonian politics are also identity politics: validating the heartland identity of honorable, productive, self-reliant, patriotic Americans, and validating their anger and resentment against those elites who don’t accord such Americans the respect they deserve and who are trying to limit the scope of their liberty. These are important truths about Jacksonian America that Rick Santorum clearly understands and taps into.

This helps make sense of the former Pennsylvania senator’s otherwise bizarre and confounding foot-in-the-mouth comment calling President Obama a snob for wanting all Americans to go to college. Santorum made these remarks at The Americans for Prosperity Forum in Troy, Michigan on Saturday February 25 to a very receptive audience that burst into applause as he spoke. Here is a video clip of Santorum’s comment. Here is a clip from an alternate version of the speech delivered in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Rick Santorum is a take-no-prisoners culture warrior. That is both his strength and his weakness. His Jacksonian populism is a passionate language of the heart; there are no pale pastels for Rick, only bold colors. (See Ronald Reagan, CPAC 1975.)“He seems to imagine America’s problems can best be described as the result of a culture war between the God-fearing conservatives and the narcissistic liberals,” David Brooks has written. This has set the tone for his 2012 presidential campaign, making for a sharp contrast with Mitt Romney. Romney, sad to say, comes across as a passionless, verbally-challenged technocrat, who hasn’t the first clue about how to connect with Jacksonian America. Which is why the “inevitable” front runner, who would be a competent manager of the economy, has been unable to close the deal with the Jacksonian conservative base of the Republican Party. In fact, while the Republican Party has since the 1960s become the party of Jacksonian America, it has not done a good job responding to its concerns about a nation that has gone astray: about an economy that no longer seems to have a place for Jacksonians who work with their hands and did not go to college; about the disintegration of traditional values, families, and communities. For many Jacksonians, including Santorum, this election is not just about reviving the economy; Santorum has offered a pro-growth and pro-family Economic Freedom Agenda. It is, more importantly, about returning America to her core values of liberty, community, Judeo-Christian morality, and limited government, which they believe are under assault by President Obama’s big government overreach symbolized by the Affordable Health Care Act otherwise known as ObamaCare. Rick Santorum has said that 2012 election is about fundamental liberty; he would not be in the presidential race were it not for ObamaCare.

If you want to understand Santorum’s “what a snob” comment, you need to place it in the context of his entire speech, which is largely an exposé of Rick Santorum’s passionate belief in American exceptionalism. Here is the C-Span video of the full 26-minute speech. Santorum gave a 55-minute version of the speech later that day at the Chattanooga Tea Party’s Liberty Forum in Tennessee.